‘South Park’ Season 21 Will Ignore Trump for ‘Kids Being Kids’

Few would accuse South Park of losing its edge, though the yearly cycle understandably has trouble keeping up with current events (at their pace these days). That’s why Season 21 will get back to basics, as creator Trey Parker wants to ditch Trump in favor of “Cartman dressing up like a robot and [screwing] with Butters.”

Yeah, and [making jokes off the latest news] has also just gotten boring. We weren’t ever really that show. We would do an entire season and there would be one moment that played off something that had just happened and people would go, “‘South Park’ is the show that does that.” And that’s just not true. We’re not.

We did start to become that, though, especially the last season. We fell into the same trap that “Saturday Night Live” fell into, where it was like, “Dude, we’re just becoming CNN now. We’re becoming: ‘Tune in to see what we’re going to say about Trump.’” Matt and I hated it but we got stuck in it somehow.

This season I want to get back to Cartman dressing up like a robot and [screwing] with Butters, because to me that’s the bread and butter of “South Park”: kids being kids and being ridiculous and outrageous but not “did you see what Trump did last night?” Because I don’t give a … anymore.

We probably could put up billboards — “Look what we’re going to do to Trump next week!” — and get crazy ratings. But I just don’t care.

That’s about in line with what Parker stated in February, that he and Stone were “really trying to make fun of what was going on, but we couldn’t keep up … we decided to just kind of back off, and let them do their comedy, and we’ll do ours.” There’s a sort of weariness to Parker’s words, but don’t make the mistake of believing they’re plotting an end to South Park. At some point, Parker believes the audience will do that for them:

The witch hunt is coming. Our day is coming. One of these days, out of nowhere, we’ll do something and they’ll go, “How dare you!” — and we’ll be done.

But what people don’t realize is, we’ve thought this for 20 years. We’ve been ready for it. Our bags are packed in the car and we’re ready to go back to Colorado. And it’s cool, man.

Stay tuned for more on South Park Season 21 as we get closer to the August premiere.